I love restoration projects like this! Keep posting pics when you have time! You have a great boat there to work on. It will need some hard work and some $$$ but when you are done you will be very happy with the results! It will be worth it when summer get here and your out on the lake with friends with cooler full of cold drinks!

It was just used in saltwater and never really taken care of... Then it got picked up by a guy who thought it needed a head gasket and somehow lost the intake and set a bunch of nasty rusty greasy parts on the carpet tearing it down.

I'm confident the harness is good and the boat was never under water.

The hot rodder in me wants to build a carbed 383 stroker.

The mad scientist in me wants a Turbo'd Cummins 4bt to run biodiesel.

But the guy who just wants a reliable ski boat this summer prevails and is looking for a solution as close to oem as possible.

There has to be someone here on TT that has a engine or knows someone that has a period correct engine for a good price. Maybe [email protected] can help out?

Working as much OT on the weekends as I can handle before it gets nice. Hoping to raise enough money to pay cash for a motor.

Engine decisions have been challenging, I made an offer for that ebay MCX with the tranny and the lady accepted. I was pretty excited about the prospect of having an MCX in the boat. Then she changed her mind and re-listed on ebay with a buy it now for 3k, then she raised it to 3500.00 a couple days later, so I said screw it, I have other options for less money. I really liked the idea of making that MCX work, especially since I may need a transmission.

Which brings me to addressing another huge obstacle. I can't get my transmission separated from the block. I know I've removed all the bellhousing bolts and was able to get it to come apart about a 1/2" from the block, and now it seems to be frozen to the flywheel.

Round One: clean up the cakebatter that oozed out of the upside down engine.

Spraying Kroil on it religiously for the last few weeks, and wrestling with it on my motorcycle jack while avoiding dropping it on my foot and breaking toes.

Cut some wedges out of some scrap 2x4's

Get the heavy hammer and start pounding wedges.

It's a bit of a challenge to drive a wedge and just make contact with the block and bellhousing, I imagine the flywheel is bolted to the crank and shouldn't stay with the tranny when it pops loose. The only thing I was able to achieve is making a lot of toothpicks and splinters.

Round Two:

I thought it may be more mangeable if I could pull the oil pan and maybe get the crankshaft out. I was mistaken I can't get the rear main seal off because it's a two piece bolt on seal and I can't get to the bolts, obviously designed to be removed w/o a transmission frozen to the crank.

Round Three:

Tired of wrestling with this thing on my floor jack, ponied up a case of Bud and got my buddy to bring me his cherry picker. Made a concoction of acetone and ATF, instead of wasting another can of of penetrant, and let that sit overnight. Hung the thing by the transmission mounts, Cut some oak wedges and some aluminum shims and went at it with the hammer and wedges again. I was definitely able to get some convincing wedgie force on this thing.

I'm starting to believe it's permanently welded to the crankshaft and will become an anchor for the slalom course.

I'm not ready to give up yet, I'm going to try and get some torch heat on it, my heat gun didn't work, and if that doesn't do it I'm going to cut the mainseal off and then cut the crankshaft and see what I can do from there.